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Reverend Coit Conover House

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1888, Clarence Luce. 208 Indian Ave.

The Conover House is another of Clarence Luce's simply shaped shingle houses into which he managed to insert quirky and fascinating architectural incident. From the road it shows a big gable end without eaves and a loose window arrangement with a single one-story shallow bay window. From the “front” (at right angles to the road), the gable projects a deep, visorlike eave, under one corner of which a second-story bay window is folded. Below this the second-story shingled wall flares as an even more extravagant visor to shelter a porch with steps running the width of the house between stone piers. Four sets of cylindrical columns as close-packed triplets support the porch well under the flaring. Built-in benches to either side of the door divide the porch (for some unknown reason) into three separate sections. To the rear the shingled walls make a corner in a series of polygonal folds, tapered inward as the wall rises, as though inspired by an ancient windmill.

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "Reverend Coit Conover House", [Middletown, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-MI6.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 512-512.

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